Chapter 46: Appreciating Becky

I was hungry after the game and would have preferred to go for pizza as we had done once before but Trisha wouldn't hear of it. She said her mother was planning for us to go to her house.

We were all a little giddy after my confrontation with Gina. Greg had said he would attend Mr. Avella's party and I had relayed the acceptance of the invitation but when I was uninvited, Greg backed out of going without informing his host.

We laughed and joked about how pissed Gina looked as she sped away from the parking lot.

"I can't believe her father thought he could tell you not to show up and then re-invite you and expect you to come," Trisha said.

"I hope there are no repercussions from this," Becky said, speaking for everyone to hear. She was sitting on the far side of the back seat, ignoring me like I was not there.

"Come over here," I said, patting the seat next to me.

She smiled, brazenly. "You come and get me," she said, suggestively. I didn't waste any time. With one quick move I picked her up and sat her down right next to me. She giggled.

Greg and Trisha were congratulating me on how well I played but I wasn't paying much attention to them.

"Did you like the way I played?" I whispered to Becky.

"I was jumping up and down the whole time, just thinking how exciting it was going to be to sit here next to you."

"Did you like how I played?" I repeated my question.

"Oh, I wasn't paying any attention to the way you played," she answered, mischievously. "I was thinking how exciting it was that it would be me sitting here next to you. Do you know that every girl in the school would be excited to be sitting where I'm sitting?"

"You didn't watch the game?" I asked, downhearted. Trisha turned around and glared at me.

"Is that all you can think about? If she saw you tackle someone? Listen to Becky. She just paid you the biggest compliment a girl can give. She's happy to be with you."

I felt Becky's body next to mine and knew Trisha was right. All I had thought of was hearing Becky tell me she liked the way I had played. Amends were in order. "Shucks, I know all that. She's the only one that stuck by me when everyone else was looking at me like I had kicked their dog or something. I knew she was happy to be sitting here beside me. It's something that I just know; heck, I expect it. But you would expect your girlfriend to watch you play, wouldn't you?"

They all spoke at once, Greg and Trisha demanding a retraction from me, saying that they had stuck by me too. But all I heard was Becky.

"Am I your girlfriend?" She asked, sounding incredibly stunned like she didn't believe me. I knew she was just fishing for me to say it again.

"You must be my girlfriend. You're the only thing that helped me ignore all those pairs of prying eyes. You sat with me in the cafeteria and kept me occupied. You let me walk you home from play-practice and you studied with me. You even invited me to Megan's party, all while everyone else blamed me for knocking Buzz on his ass."

"You did that for me because you thought he was hitting on me. Don't tell me you didn't," she said, accusingly.

She was right. I didn't try to argue with her. "I may have been wrong about that," I admitted.

Trisha's mother's house was in the same neighborhood where Greg lived, but it was considerably larger and more impressive than the Dustin home. Becky took it all in, the marble covered entryway, the mahogany stairway railing, the vaulted ceilings and the chandeliers while I tried to get her attention. "Close your mouth," I whispered. "It's only a house."

The spread on Trisha's mother's dining room table would put Mr. Avella's parties to shame. We loaded our plates with all sorts of delicacies and were directed to take seats in an adjacent room that reminded me of the sunroom at the Oldham home. It was large and airy, but the way the furniture was arranged made it seem cozy.

Mrs. Arneski joined us, but didn't have anything to eat herself. "I read all about you in the school newspaper," she said to me. She was tall, like Trisha, but with darker hair color, a few more years and a few more pounds, of course.

"Mom, Greg didn't know him very well when he wrote that article, it would seem," Trisha said, elbowing Greg. "You would have thought Sammy was winning the game single-handedly if you listened to the crowd."

"Does that mean you won?" Mrs. Arneski asked.

"We lost," Greg said. "But the crowd was so wrought up by Sammy's play that we didn't notice that we were behind when the final whistle was blown. I guess we all thought you had a chance right up until the last minute," he said to me.

We stayed for another hour after we finished eating, the conversation changing from the subject of football to Becky's play to Megan's party the following evening. Trisha walked with us to the car so she could kiss Greg goodnight. I was sure she would go back inside and tell her mother the other story that had surfaced about me, the one she had alluded to. I was glad the reason for my new nickname had not been brought up while I was there. I no longer cared if people knew the story, but I didn't want to be the one that had to explain it to them.

Greg dropped us off at Becky's house and I told him I would walk home from there. I wanted to talk to her and I could tell she wanted to talk to me too. The porch light was burning but that didn't bother me. If her mother was watching us, let her watch.

"What are you going to do tomorrow?" she asked.

"You mean what are we going to do, don't you?"

"I know about the party tomorrow night. I wasn't talking about that."

"I'm going for a run in the morning, but after that we're going shopping," I said, thinking this was a good a time as any to tell her I was going to buy her something to wear to Megan's party. But it didn't turn out that way. Becky was contented to learn that I wanted to do something with her. She didn't ask what we were going to shop for or even where I planned to take her.

"Am I really your girlfriend?" She asked while running her fingers up and down my arm.

"I was serious when I said you were the only one that stood by me when no one else would look at me. I went wild when I thought Buzz Summers was cutting in on me with you."

"I meant what I said about being happy that I was going to be with you tonight after you played so well. I really was watching you. I could tell you every play you made but what I wanted you to know was how happy it made me to know that I was your date tonight."

"Does that mean you will be my girlfriend?"

Becky laughed. We were interrupted by the porch light being switched off and then on. I kissed her once more and watched her go inside before I started home, running.

"Did you get to play?" my sister asked when I got home.

"What are you doing home?" I asked, surprised to find her there on a Friday night.

"I'm not seeing Jerry any more," she said without further explanation. I didn't press her for a reason. We sat down and I told her about the trouble I had been in with the coaches and how I got into the game in the second half. Heather didn't understand anything about football, but she was able to imagine the fear I saw in the eyes of the ball carrier when I was bearing down on him. She seemed to understand ball possession and the importance of taking the ball out the hands of the opposition.

I couldn't tell her about my new nickname or the Apple-corer boy article on the bulletin board that morning. It would have brought back bad memories. Nor did I tell her about Greg's article about me in the school newspaper and how angry he was that he had not known to include my affair with the apple-corer tool.

"I'm sorry, Sammy. I hope I didn't get you into too much trouble," she said when I stopped talking for a few seconds.

"What do you mean, Heather?"

"It was me. I called the coach and told him you didn't come home until three o'clock on Sunday morning," my sister said, moving away from me when she saw my fist. But I restrained myself, thinking, this cannot be happening.

"Why would you do that, Heather?" I asked when I thought it was safe for me to speak. She was bawling.

"I don't know," she said, wiping away the flood of tears from her cheeks, looking helpless.

I turned away from her, wanting to put her out of my sight but she tugged at my arm. "You have everything, Sammy. I guess I was envious. You're smart ... popular ... and rich. What do I have? A job at a diner and a rotten life, that's what."

"Go to your room Heather. I'm going to bed," I said, wanting to be alone.

"I have to get out of here, Sammy. Will you help me?"

She sounded like she was going to start crying again, something I didn't want to hear. "How can I help you?" I asked, thinking that if it was money I would tell her no. She had stolen from me and turned me in for breaking curfew. Now she was asking for help. What is it?" I asked, knowing I was going to say no.

"If I could get a high school diploma I could go someplace and get a job," she began.

"You're the one that dropped out of school. Are you thinking of going back to high school?" I asked, accusingly.

"I could take an exam. They offer an equivalency exam. You could help me study to pass it. Will you do that for me, Sammy?"

She had a way of making me feel sorry for her. I reached out and took her in my arms. She cried for a few minutes and fell asleep. Our mother came home from work and found us sleeping on the couch in the living room, my arm curled around Heather.

It was raining the next morning but I had to get out of the house. Mr. Olsen invited me to come inside his house for a cup of coffee. I seldom drank coffee but I had two cups of his strong brew that day while we talked. He was excited about the football game and how my play had gotten the high school crowd fired up.

"My neighbor said we would have won if you had played the whole game. Why didn't you start, Sammy? You would have made all the difference if you had you been in there."

"I got into a little trouble this week, Mr. Olsen," I said, not wanting to be more specific unless he pinned me down. He didn't exactly probe but I did tell him the 'Apple' cheers came about because a girl had put one of the newspaper articles on the bulletin board at school, getting by without revealing that my sister was the one who called the coach to report what time I came home the previous Sunday morning.

"How do you feel about your secret being exposed, Sammy?" Mr. Olsen asked.

I stopped to think about his question before I answered. On one side I was pissed at Gina for drudging up an incident that happened two summers before. Did she want to embarrass me? I was already living in exile for the hit I made on Buzz Summers. Was it her intent to make my life more miserable than it already was? Whatever her reason, it backfired.

"In a way, I'm glad it came out that I am the apple-corer boy. Did you hear them cheering for me?"

Mr. Olsen looked at me, a smile on his lips and the weathered wrinkles in his cheeks looked like they would crack open if his grin became any wider. "My neighbor and I were cheering right along with your schoolmates," he said.

Who was the neighbor he mentioned so often? I realized I didn't know very much about this man. Did he live alone? I had never seen anyone else but Mr. Olsen around the farm.

I got up to leave, telling Mr. Olsen I would see him again next Saturday.

"It's still raining. Do you want me to drive you back to town?" He asked.

"No thanks, Mr. Olsen. The rain makes me concentrate on things," I said.

"Say, I haven't seen that big car parked in front of my barn lately. Did she get in trouble?"

I laughed. "No, Sir. She's the one that posted the apple-corer boy article on the bulletin board."

He laughed too and I saw the deep wrinkles again. "You have more troubles than a boy of your age has a right to have, Sammy. And just think, it all started with a burr getting lodged on my ass."